Former Formula One team manager Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson, a former F1 team engineer, announced that they would start their own team, USF1, based in Charlotte, NC.

While no official announcements were made of drivers, and the team did not mention any drivers they approached, Windsor threw out a few names during the press conference.

He said:

We haven’t made any decision on drivers yet. … All the drivers out there, if one had to take names now … the next generation looks really good. You’ve got Alex Rossi, who obviously won a lot of races in Formula BMW. You’ve got Conor Daly and Josef Newgarden … really three talented young guys. Gabby Chavez is also very good. And if you take a level slightly higher than that, you have Jonathan Summerton, who has won at the international level already in A1GP driving for Team USA .

While those names mean little to NASCAR fans, the next group of names were quite interesting.

Windsor continued:

Scott Speed has Formula One experience. We know Scott. He’s a very talented guy. He’s doing very well in NASCAR right now. It would be interesting to know if he is totally comfortable where he is right now. There are NASCAR drivers out there right now who I really think if they wanted to switch to Formula One, we could groom them and help them make that change. We were chatting with Dave Despain the other night about Kyle Busch for example. What a great star he would be. Formula One would welcome anything like that.

Windsor also added Danica Patrick’s name to the mix.

A report in India says that Anderson would like to offer Patrick the chance to drive. But, no where in the story is Anderson quoted as saying he would like her to.

The news of USF1’s interest in Patrick came as news to her. In an AP report, she said:

You know, it starts with a phone call, and I haven’t heard anything. It’s funny how these things get going. But I’m happy driving in the IndyCar Series, I’m happy in North America.

And, someone has gone so far as to petition fans to get Busch out of NASCAR and into F1.